


The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

by Andraste



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Community: halfamoon, Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-01
Updated: 2010-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-06 22:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andraste/pseuds/Andraste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being dropped back into 1965 has challenges and benefits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

After they convince the bus conductor not to throw them out onto the street, it takes Ian three whole hours to persuade his bank manager that he really _isn't_ dead.

Barbara can see already that there's going to be a lot more of this to get through. Her own bank manager is likely to be even less accepting of their miraculous return, and she hasn't even called her mother yet. Barbara finds that she isn't really worried. Next to Daleks and Mechanoids, trying to reconstruct their lives after two missing years they can't adequately explain to anyone seems like nothing. At the end of the afternoon, Ian has managed to extract enough money to be going on with, and they share a meal of fish and chips before finding a hotel for the night.

Ian signs them in as Mr. and Mrs. Smith – it seems ludicrous to get separate rooms after all they've been through together – and Barbara glories in the luxury of a proper hot shower. One thing she is going to miss is the TARDIS hairdressing machine, but she'll doubtless get used to doing things the old-fashioned way again.

She doesn't have so much as a night dress to put on. The hotel clerk had looked decidedly suspicious when they checked in without a single piece of luggage between them, and now she's sitting on the lumpy bed with a towel around her head, wrapped in the orange hotel quilt to keep warm. She can't remember when she last felt so relaxed and happy.

Ian, on the other hand, is pacing backwards and forwards in his socks, obviously deep in thought. "First of all, we need to think of an explanation for where we've been all this time." They'd managed to avoid the subject that afternoon, declaring it none of the bank's business, but that wouldn't work for long.

"Before that, we need to get some new things," Barbara says. "I'm going to have to spend tomorrow shopping." There had been a sewing machine on the TARDIS, something else she was going to miss. She wonders what would have happened to hers.

Ian laughs. "Back in the 20th century, and the first thing you want to do is go shopping?"

"We need to! Heaven knows what's happened to our possessions, but we can hardly manage without clothes."

"That's not the half of it. We'll have to get a house, a car ... I left mine outside the scrapyard, remember? Probably ended up being towed in and broken up."

"A house?" They've never talked about this, living as they do, and all of a sudden she's aware that 1965 is going to be very different in some ways she hadn't previously considered.

"Yes – I wonder, should we go back to Shoreditch? I admit I like the idea of being somewhere familiar again, but it would multiply the amount of explanations we'll have to give. Imagine what the green grocer will think!"

"One house," Barbara says carefully, "for the two of us." She's hadn't thought before about the fact that they've technically been living in sin; it's not as if they could do anything about it at the time.

"Yes, I -" Ian finally realises what he's just implied, and he sits down on the bed beside her, looking worried all of a sudden. "I just assumed we would -"

She doesn't have to say yes. There's no reason, now that they're back home, why they have to spend the rest of their lives together. Except that Barbara simply can't imagine being without him, and she doesn't want to.

"Oh, Ian, don't be silly. Of course I'll marry you."

He grins at her and takes her hand. "So: a house, a car, and an engagement ring?"

"Shoes first!" Something she'll never have to run away from bug-eyed monsters in.

Ian rolls his eyes. "Shoes. I can see that life is going to be full of excitement from now on."

She hits him on the arm playfully, and as he kisses her and they tumble backwards on the bed, Barbara reflects that life in 1965 will have its own kind of new adventures.


End file.
